Bluebeard and the Outlaw

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Yrsha

Bluebeard and the Outlaw – Tara Grayce
Series: A Villain’s Ever After #3
Type of book: audiobook
Narrator: Liz Brand
Length: 5 h 2 min

Synopsis from Goodreads:
Marriage: the ultimate heist.
Robin of the Wood spends her days robbing from the rich to feed the poor. But she and her merry band of brothers never seem to get anywhere. The more she steals, the more the evil Lord Guy “Bluebeard” taxes the villagers.
When Robin discovers that Lord Guy plans to marry yet again, she conceives a plan for a final, big score. As Guy’s wife, she will have access to his wealth. The lord is notorious for killing his wives shortly after he marries them, but Robin has no plans to be dead wife number four.
The only problem is that Lord Guy is devastatingly handsome, brooding, and nothing at all what she expected. If she isn’t careful, she might just find that he steals her heart before she can rob his riches.

I felt like this story had quite the potential but not did not really live up to what it could have been. Where do I start?

It was fun that Hood’s band was her brothers but that did not help the story. It felt a bit forced that all of them were siblings and that they just followed everything Robin says blindly. It felt like Robin could not do anything wrong, she did not have any faults. Even when she did play a noblewoman quite poorly, no-one questioned whether she was the person she was pretending to be or not.

I would have expected that someone who had spent a lot of time chasing a person would have suspected something? And they could have done more with the sheriff, there was a potential for him to take a bigger character role in the beginning of the book? Now it did not really make sense as to why he was spending so much time at that house?

As an archer I always find it fascinating to read descriptions of shooting arrows and bows in books. This one was perhaps not spot on but it was not any major errors that poked me in the eye while reading anyway.

I think that I am giving this book a weak 3 stars out of 5. I did enjoy listening to this book, it was a fun variant of the Robin Hood story, but it could have been so much more.

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Weekly update #83 – the shawl is finished!

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Yrsha

I am still reading Blood Heir, but am nearing the end. I like it, a lot of things are happening all the time but it does not call on me to pick it up, to keep reading.

I am currently listening to Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston. It has a bit of humour in it and is a bit absurd. A lot of things that are not explained and I am not sure that we will get the answer to it. It is a fun listen anyway and I might continue the series also after I have finished this one. I find the idea of badger shifters quite fun. So far we have not seen very few full shifts, though, I was kind of expecting more. I am not too fond of the audiobook cover, I would rather have had a badger or something on it. Or the three sisters. I know that this cover is common on certain books but I do not think that this represents the content of the book.

I have finished my shawl crocheting project! I have really enjoyed this colour shifting yarn and I am now trying to decide on my next project with a similar yarn. This pattern was very easy so I think that I would like to try something a little more advanced next. I do also have other projects started that I will spend some time on while I think.

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Pick a random number: #TheRealCinderella

Posted on April 28, 2024 by Yrsha

A friend of mine told me about this challenge where you pick random number between 1 and the amount of books you have in your “to-read” shelf on Goodreads. The number that gets picked, that book you have to read (if you can get ahold of the book).

I decided to try it out straight away and and got number 192. Number 192 was #TheReadCinderella by Yesenia Vargas. I love to dive in to a retelling of Cinderella and started as soon as I’d said goodbye to my friend.

#TheRealCinderella – Yesenia Vargas
Narrator: Kyla Garcia
Series: #BestFriendsForever #1

Synopsis from Goodreads:
Geeky Ella Reyes is at the bottom of the totem pole at Westwood High. Her ultra-popular stepsisters refuse to be seen with her at school, and every day she comes home to a mountain of chores. 

Ella’s only friend (and maybe crush) lives on the other side of her phone’s screen. She and Baller929 know everything about each other, except their real names.

When they have a chance to meet at her school’s Halloween ball, Ella must figure out a way to get there without her stepmom or stepsisters finding out. 

Is revealing her identity to Baller929 worth risking the one good thing left in her life? Or is he too good to be true?

I’m not crying, you’re crying! No but for reals, I got a little teary eyed at the end with the apologizing from the step sisters.

This is a tricky book to rate. On one hand, I got very invested and love the Cinderella type of story. But there are also things that do not really fit nicely in the story. For example, the dress. They had no real indication that the dress was actually for her, they just assumed and took it?

I usually do not complain so much on character development and similar but here it feels like I need to a little bit. She was too nice all the way throughout the story. She was the only one apologizing. Now, it has been a while since I finished this book but in my notes from this book, it seems like the step sisters apologizes to Ella but that she also apologizes (but perhaps can be interpreted as a “I am sorry you felt that way” kind of sorry). The guy though, he did not apologize and that made me a bit mad.

Ella also had a lot of thoughts about her appearance, that she did not look as good as all the other girls in the school and that her glasses was a part of this (she did become a lot pretties without them?). I would have loved to see a much clearer insight that this did not matter, that she would have realized that this does not matter. She does realize that she can save herself but the appearance leaves us hanging. Why do they need to chase the pretty-ness? Also, glasses are not something that makes people less pretty and it is weird that this still is something that authors choose to write.

Initial thought was to give this book a 4, but because of the apologizing and the character development, I think I will leave it at a 2.5 out of 5 stars.

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Weekly update #82 – currently reading

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Yrsha

I do not think I am the only one planning to do so many things and then not being able to do them all. It does not really bother me that I cannot do everything but some things are always the thing that gets the prioritization later. I always read, sometimes more and sometimes less, but writing about what I read often get the prioritization later. And then I often have this okay, now is the day I am going to start writing for real. Today is one of those days. I like writing so lets see if I can prioritize it a bit for a little while.

What am I currently reading? A couple of things. I currently have a bunch of books in a stack that I have started but mostly I am reading Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao. There is magic and conmen and I hope this is a successful combo, so far so good.

I am currently listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. I regularly listen to Harry Potter, mostly in English with Stephen Fry (great narrator!) but seldom to the last two books in the series. I have currently about two hours left and I am not sure what to listen to next.

I recently found that my audiobook service is now allowing me to listen to books in more language than Swedish, English, Finnish and Arabic. I learned German for several years in school and have always had the ambition to continue to learn German and now I am trying to find the right book to listen to. Since my German is not the best it has ever been, I want to find something familiar with a not too advanced language. I was sad to find that they did not have the Harry Potter books in German because that would have been the obvious pick. I have read the first book in German with my eyes and have started the second but I would find it nice to listen to it at the same time as reading it with my eyes to enhance the learning a bit.

I am a bit behind in my Goodreads goal so far this year. It is one of the few book goals I set each year. But there is a lot left of this year so we will see how it goes. I have plans to read a bunch of my thinner books on my shelves and a few thicker ones and then there are those German ones.

What have I been doing otherwise? I crochet, put up new wallpaper in the house we are renting, puzzle, think about repotting my plants, bake, cook and attend a lot of different activities.

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Weekly update #81

Posted on January 21, 2023 by Yrsha

We have started reading The Hollow Man (my copy: Den ihålige mannen) by John Dickson Carr together at work. There are a lot of names and sometimes it’s a bit confusing who is speaking and doing something. I started an excel sheet so that we can both keep track of the characters and so that we can enter guesses for who the murderer is. We have read a couple of cosy crime books before, I like reading those for our style of book circle, and we have never saved the guesses like this before. It will be interesting to see how many have guesses correctly (or not) in the end.

Since last week, I’ve finished reading Howl’s Moving Castle (liked it) and Heat Wave (did not like it). I’m curious to see the movie Of Howl’s Moving Castle now to compare, it was a long time ago I saw it so I don’t remember much.

I was reading Heat Wave as part of a challenge, reading books by the same name. I have a couple of more books to read in that challenge before I share all my thoughts. The books are quite varied so it’s going to be interesting to see where we end up.

On the creative part there has not been much activity this week. My eyes have been a bit tired so when I have ended my working day I haven’t really been in the mood for looking at things at close distance. They are better now so I think there will be more things happening soon.

What have you been up to?

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Weekly update #80 – it’s been a while

Posted on January 9, 2023 by Yrsha

My blogging goes a little up and down, I sit down and blog a little when I feel like it. I have the app on my phone which makes it possible to blog from my phone but it’s much more comfortable to do from the computer. I haven’t been spending so much time in front of the computer lately and therefore there haven’t been so much activity here either. I could promise to post more now but I think we all know that such promise could turn out to be tricky to keep.

Projects

What have I been up to lately? I have started to cross stitch. I haven’t done it for many years but I passed a cross stitch magasine while out Christmas shopping that held a very cute cross stitch pattern on the cover and felt like trying it out again. I’ve started on said pattern and have also cross stitched a cat on a sweater to cover up a hole that I patched. It’s fun! I think there will be a few more of those projects.

A birthday card in progress
A cross stitched cat on sweater

Reading

I’m currently re-reading River Marked by Patricia Briggs. It’s the sixth book in the Mercy Thompson series. I have a couple of unread books in the series and felt like re-rearing a couple books to freshen up my memory of the series before continuing. And, I really like the series so it’s just a delight to be back in the world.

I did finish listen to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone the other day. I think that Stephen Fry is a marvelous narrator so when I didn’t know what to listen to this is what I picked. Even though I’ve read and listened to those books many times there are always small details that I’ve forgotten or things I realise while reading. It’s a good series.

I’m currently listening to a non-fiction book about user experience called Sweet Spot UX: Communicating User Experience to Stakeholders, Decision Makers and Other Humans by Mike Newman. It felt like the book had a very long intro, explaining why this book was written, but finally I think we’re starting to come somewhere. It’s maybe not what I expected when going into the book but I think it could be interesting anyway.

I’m also listening to Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones. My sister has been recommending this one to me and I really like it so far!

Stats and such

I’ve been thinking about keeping some sort of excel sheet for my read books during the year to be able to do some nice stats and charts of my reading. I’ve just never gotten around to it and I haven’t known what to put in there. But now, now I’ve done it. I googled on existing speadsheets yesterday and found one I like. I’m going to try it out for a bit and see if I want to create my own based on it once I know what I like and dislike with it. For now, I just like to fill it with the books I’ve read this year (which doesn’t happen to be so many because the year just started) and the books I’m currently reading to see how it’s affecting the stats. How fun!

What are you currently reading?

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Nattkorpen

Posted on January 8, 2023 by Yrsha

Nattkorpen – Johan Runberg
Series: Månvind & Hoff #1
Type of book: Hardcover
Length: 183 pages

Synopsis från förlagets hemsida:
Vintern håller Stockholm i ett järngrepp, tullarna är igensnöade och det går varken att ta sig in eller ut ur staden. Mika har bott på Barnhuset på Drottninggatan i hela sitt liv. För att kunna överleva i 1800-talets Stockholm har hon utvecklat ett skarpt sinne för detaljer och hotfulla situationer. En natt lämnas en nyfödd flicka till barnhuset av en skräckslagen ung man. Det blir början på en kedja av händelser som ska försätta Mika i större fara än hon någonsin kunnat föreställa sig.

När det var min tur att föreslå böcker att rösta om var Nattkorpen en av alternativen, den vann omröstningen med hästlängder. Vi har ännu inte hunnit ha vårt bokprat där vi diskuterade boken, vädret satte käppar i hjulet för det planerade diskussionstillfället så vi sköt fram det en vecka, så det ska bli spännande vad de andra tycker om boken.

Jag förstår att den här boken har fått pris. Det är en bok som både gammal och ung kan uppskatta. Det är en spännande bok som är väldigt lätt att fortsätta läsa. Jag tycker om dynamiken mellan Mika och Hoff. Vi vet inte genast om polisen som drar med henne ut till fängelset är en bra eller dålig man, vi får känna tveksamheten tills han bevisat vad han går för.

Det är något speciellt med historier som har en karaktär med sinne för detaljer, lite i Sherlock-anda, och det här är en sådan. Det är väldigt tillfredsställande när Mika kan göra en slutsats eller knäppa någon på näsan med sina färdigheter.

Nattkorpen är den första boken i en serie och det finns fortfarande lösa trådar som behöver knytas ihop som gör att jag längtar efter att få plocka upp nästa del. Först måste jag bara diskutera boken med mina medläsare innan jag får fortsätta på nästa del…

Jag gav boken 4 av 5 stjärnor – jag tyckte väldigt mycket om den.

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Immortal Born

Posted on September 12, 2022 by Yrsha

Immortal Born – Lynsay Sands
Series: Argeneau #30
Type of book: Audiobook
Narrator: Amanda Ronconi
Length: 9 hours, 32 minutes

Synopsis from Goodreads:
A simple promise to protect her friend’s infant son has turned Allie Chambers’ existence upside down. Caring for—and feeding—an orphaned vampire baby has been tricky enough. But as little Liam grows, so does his appetite. He needs more blood than she can personally supply. And when her attempts to steal from a blood bank go awry, Allie wakes up surrounded by doctors, cops…and the gorgeous, mesmerizing Magnus, who she can neither trust nor resist.

Magnus never expected to find his life mate breaking into a blood bank. Clearly, Allie is already entwined with his world—in deeper, more dangerous ways than she realizes. A band of vicious rogue immortals is in pursuit, and Magnus’ first task is to keep her safe. His second: to awaken her to mind-blowing pleasure, and hope she’ll accept the life, and the passion, that only he can offer.

Immortal Born is the first book I read in the Argeneau series. I stumbled upon the series in a bookstore in the capital city and was hesitant to buy it since it wasn’t first in a series. I therefore checked for it on my audiobook service and was pleased to see that they indeed had it.

At first the story sucked me in and I was eager to continue to listen, I wanted to see what happened next. Then there was the over use of the phrase “life mate”. Even though I was new to this vampire world, I did not have any trouble in understanding this concept and the constant mention of her being his life mate was a bit much.

If I didn’t know that this was the 30th book in the series, I would have thought this was an early book. The author does a good job explaining the world and the history of the vampires and I don’t have many questions after finishing the book.

I found it a bit of out of character that Ally was so accepting and didn’t question the information she got from the other characters in the book. She was very quick into this new world and didn’t keep her distance or scepticism that I would have expected, especially given her history.

The newfound relationships found later in the book, the ones making a new family was a bit forced. They were kind of quick but I didn’t feel the same warm tug to my heart as the main character did. The timeline in this book is quite short, if this book had taken place during a longer period this would probably not have felt as weird.

And that ending? No, not fitting to this story. Happily ever after, yes, I like that. But this, too fast. A bit rushed and feels a lite out of place.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and give it 3 out of 5 stars. I will probably check out more books in this series.

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Mina tjockaste olästa böcker

Posted on January 15, 2022 by Yrsha

Här är en bunt av mina tjockaste olästa böcker. Från The Priory of the Orange Tree på 830 sidor till Vision in Silver på 511 sidor.

The Priory of the Orange Tree är skriven av Samantha Shannon som också skriver serien Bone Season som jag gillar mycket. Det här är en fristående bok och jag har bara hört bra saker om den.

De första tolv är fortsättningen på Flickan från ingenstans som vi läste tillsammans på jobbet. Jag tyckte den första var spännande och ville gärna läsa fortsättningen så denna införskaffades med.

The Oxford Book of Detective Stories är en samling noveller av olika författare med detektiv-tema.

Konsten att få mentala superkrafter fanns det ett gäng exemplar av på jobbet som blivit över vid utdelning av sommarpresent där alla fick en inslagen bok. De överblivna böckerna åkte in i bokbytarhyllan som jag startade upp och denna fick följa med hem.

Uppstigningens brunn är en fortsättning på Det sista riket. Den första boken sträckläste jag och när jag såg Uppstigningens brunn del 1 och 2 på bokrean så slog jag till direkt. Dock så måste jag nog läsa om första boken innan jag ger mig på nästkommande delar.

Vision in Silver är del tre i serien The Others, en serie där det är de övernaturliga varelserna som styr istället för att leva i skymundan som de ofta gör i andra serier. Den här är påbörjad och väntar på att få bli färdigläst.

Som alltid när jag kikar igenom hyllorna så blir jag sugen på att läsa allihopa, jag ska bara komma på vilken jag ska börja (eller fortsätta på) först…

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Minisummering 2021 + Lästankar 2022

Posted on January 12, 2022 by Yrsha

Ett nytt år har börjat och bokräknaren har nollställts.

Under 2021 hade jag målet att läsa 70 böcker (Goodreads) och att försöka läsa lite fler av mina egna böcker och från ljudbokstjänsten när ändå biblioteket var stängt. Jag ville också våga köpa lite mer okända böcker om de inte fanns tillgängliga på biblioteket. Jag tycker att jag uppnådde mina mål med god marginal. Jag läste 85 böcker under året och 41 av dessa var från mina egna hyllor. Lite inköp blev det men kanske inte så mycket nya vågade köp, det var mer köp hela serien innan den slutar säljas-köp.

Så, vad tänker jag inför 2022?

Återigen blir det ett Goodreadsmål på 70 böcker.

När jag i början av året kikade igenom min app där jag för statistik över mina egenägda böcker såg jag att det rent tekniskt sätt var möjligt att läsa alla mina olästa böcker om jag läste x antal sidor varje dag. Men det är inte riktigt min typ av mål och det förutsätter att jag inte kommer läsa några andra böcker eller få fler böcker under årets gång. Så den tanken övergav jag men jag kommer nog gå in och snegla lite på statistiken ändå och se hur mycket jag har läst under året.

I julklapp fick jag ett medlemskap i Akademibokhandelns låna och läs. Det är inte de böckerna jag typiskt plockar upp själv men jag utmanar mig själv att plocka upp böcker utanför min bekvämlighetszon. Och också att bli bättre på att aktivt sluta läsa böcker som inte är något för mig (istället för det inaktiva jag tror jag börjar läsa den här boken lite tills jag glömt bort vad den andra boken handlade om och jag måste antingen läsa om den eller låta den gå).

Jag hittade i min statistik att jag inte har rört mina tjockaste böcker under året som gått, så jag vill ge mig en liten extra push att ge mig på dom.

Det sista diffusa målet är att aktivt söka upp de böcker som jag är lite extra sugen att läsa på.

Har ni några läsmål under 2022?

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